In today's world, cellular networks provide on-demand communications capabilities to individuals and business entities. Typically, a cellular network is wireless network that can be distributed over land areas, which are called cells. Each such cell is served by at least one fixed-location transceiver, which is referred to as a cell site or a base station. Each cell can use a different set of frequencies than its neighbor cells in order to avoid interference and provide guaranteed bandwidth within each cell. When cells are joined together, they provide radio coverage over a wide geographic area, which enables a large number of mobile telephones, and/or other wireless devices or portable transceivers to communicate with each other and with fixed transceivers and telephones anywhere in the network. Such communications are performed through base stations and are accomplished even if when mobile transceivers are moving through more than one cell during transmission. Major wireless communications providers have deployed such cell sites throughout the world, thereby allowing communications mobile phones and mobile computing devices to be connected to the public switched telephone network and public Internet.
A mobile telephone is a portable telephone that is capable of receiving and/or making telephone and/or data calls through a cell site or a transmitting tower by using radio waves to transfer signals to and from the mobile telephone. In view of a large number of mobile telephone users, current mobile telephone networks provide a limited and shared resource. In that regard, cell sites and handsets can change frequency and use low power transmitters to allow simultaneous usage of the networks by many callers with less interference. Coverage by a cell site can depend on a particular geographical location and/or a number of users that can potentially use the network. For example, in a city, a cell site can have a range of up to approximately ½ mile; in rural areas, the range can be as much as 5 miles; and in some areas, a user can receive signals from a cell site 25 miles away.
The following are examples of some of the digital cellular technologies that are in use by the communications providers: Global System for Mobile Communications (“GSM”), General Packet Radio Service (“GPRS”), cdmaOne, CDMA2000, Evolution-Data Optimized (“EV-DO”), Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (“EDGE”), Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (“UMTS”), Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (“DECT”), Digital AMPS (“IS-136/TDMA”), and Integrated Digital Enhanced Network (“iDEN”). The Long Term Evolution, or 4G LTE, which was developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”) standards body, is a standard for a wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. LTE is based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA digital cellular technologies and allows for increasing capacity and speed by using a different radio interface together with core network improvements.
Communications links typically connect endpoint devices (e.g., mobile telephones, personal computers, servers, etc.) so that devices can transmit data to one another. Data transmissions are typically governed by various protocols that are specified in the Internet protocol suite, which includes the networking model and a set of communications protocols used for the Internet and/or similar networks. The Internet protocol suite is typically referred to as TCP/IP and contains its most important protocols: the Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”) and the Internet Protocol (“IP”). The TCP/IP model and protocols are maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force (“IETF”). TCP/IP provides end-to-end connectivity specifying how data should be formatted, addressed, transmitted, routed and received at the destination endpoint device. TCP/IP protocols are organized into the following four abstraction layers (from lowest to highest): the link layer (containing communication technologies for a single network segment (link)), the internet layer (connecting independent networks to establish internetworking), the transport layer (handling process-to-process communication), and the application layer (providing interfaces to the user and support services).
Transmissions of data in a wireless communication system using TCP are typically affected by the delays, drops, and interruptions that can be result of congestion and/or retransmissions of data packets. These can occur in view of lack of available bandwidth that can be used for transmission of data packets on the downlink as well as data and acknowledgements on the uplink. Thus, the users can experience poor connectivity, data loss, congestion, redundant transmissions, battery power loss (e.g., in user equipment), and other problems. Thus, there is a need to provide a wireless communication system that is capable of providing an efficient, cost-effective and reliable transmission of video data between endpoint devices using TCP while maintaining downlink throughput at substantially constant level.